Local Plugins for Pulse (4.5.1 meter or later)

What Are Local Plugins

Local plugins refer to the deployment of a meter plugin on the local file system directly by a user. This deployment model differs from a “remote” plugin in which the meter itself pulls down the data directly from github. Installation within the file system can be performed using any means at your disposal. This opens the possibility for scaling out deployments of meters on hosts using native packaging systems (apt, rpm, msi, etc) for their respective platforms.

Why Use Local Plugins

For many of the Truesight Pulse users, the existing plugin deployment model may be sufficient. For users with large scale deployments, special security concerns, or custom application metric collection, local plugins may provide a more elegant, or the only, solution. In general, if a customer meets any of the following conditions, they may want to consider using a local plugin.

No direct access to the plugin github repository

User has custom metrics collection software that they don’t wish to host remotely

Large scale deployment where interacting with each meter via the UI is untenable

User wishes to rapid prototype a plugin before officially hosting it remotely

Prerequisites

The TrueSight Pulse meter, with a version of 4.5.1 or later, needs to be installed and running on any host where the local plugin will run. For older meters, check the following guide: Local Plugins for older meters

Pre-Installation

If the user is deploying an existing stock plugin, it is recommended that the plugin be added to the users account via the Pulse UI. This will insure that any default plugin dashboards are generated in advance. This only needs to be done for a single machine on any given account.

Example

In the following example, the “Ping Check” plugin will be installed as a local plugin. The outlined procedure can be used to install any of the existing stock TrueSight Pulse plugins. The following steps are for a Unix type OS. Other OS’s, such as windows will follow similar steps but will have different paths. See the Appendix for details.

Pre-Installation

Add Ping Check (existing stock plugin) to account via the Pulse UI. Please see the following knowledge article for more information.

Download the Ping Check plugin

The plugin needs to be pulled from the git repository and placed in the appropriate location. The steps below will download the plugin in the local plugins directory.

Most plugins need some additional configuration. The same fields that are edited in the UI when installing the plugin will be set locally. The plugin parameter file is called param.json. The steps below use ‘vi’ as the editor, but any text editor will suffice. The default param.json file has a number of sample entries we will be removing. When editing simply cut/paste the text shown to configure the plugin.

# cd boundary-plugin-ping-check

# vi param.json

Change the contents of the file to:

{

"items":[

{

"source":"google-ping",

"host":"www.google.com",

"pollInterval":"1"

}

],

"pollInterval":1000

}

Save the changes

Enable the plugin

Once the local plugin is in place and configured, the control file - local_plugins.conf - needs to be updated. The update will create an entry for the plugin, and set it to enabled. The meter periodically checks this file for updates. To enable the newly installed plugin perform the following actions.

# vi /etc/truesight/local_plugins.conf

Change the contents of the file to:

{

"plugins":{

"boundary-plugin-ping-check":"enabled"

}

}

Save the changes to the file

If the meter console is open, the following should be observed within 30 seconds.